ghetto laptop

4 June 2008

OK, so my poor ghetto laptop. I told you I’d come back and talk about it. I don’t blame you for not believing me.

See, I’m not very good to my laptop. Although it’s only two years old, it lies around the house, mostly on the floor, and stays open and gets food on it and god only knows what other abuse. The area next to the touch screen is scratched all to shit from me using an external mouse on it without a mousepad. But the worst part is that because I leave it open a lot, the easiest way to pick it up is by the top of the screen: I KNOW THIS IS BAD and if you don’t know this is bad then TAKE MY WORD FOR IT IT’S BAD. Anyway, spare me your tsking because of course the hinges have snapped. The hinges at the sides that allow the lid to open and close, I mean. At first, it was only one hinge, and I was irritated and rough with it because I had no idea what was going on… you don’t really expect something MECHANICAL to bollocks up on your laptop, you know? Catastrophic hard drive failure, or pixels failing in the screen, fine, but not a piece of metal wearing out from fatigue. Well, maybe you do. I sure as hell didn’t. Googling has since taught me that this particular laptop is rife for broken hinges, well THANK YOU GOOGLE as I DID NOT THINK to check ‘hinge durability’ during my quest for a laptop. If you did think to check this, then kudos to you, because it certainly never crossed my mind.

Anyway, when your hinge breaks, and then your other hinge breaks, and Mr. T unscrews your laptop screen surround and informs you that your laptop is ALL KINDS OF FUCKED, what happens is that the screen part becomes attached to the keyboard part by only a couple of wires. This seems fine, until you realise that to use a laptop, the screen has to be sort of VERTICAL. Being attached by wires only means it pretty much stays HORIZONTAL, if not leaning drunkenly towards the floor or sliding alarmingly to the side, meaning you have to lunge desperately at the screen lest it part ways entirely with the rest of the laptop. What this means in practice is that you have to use your laptop with your knees drawn up, so as to let the screen part rest backwards against your knees. The other way you can do this is to lie on your side on the new carpet, and stand the laptop up on its side, tilting the screen to its preferred angle. Of course, it’s then completely impossible to type, so apologies if my commenting dips from its current craptastic levels down to non-existent.

This all sounds sad, right? It’s even sadder when you realise this happened several months ago, and I ebayed and purchased the correct hinges, and they arrived and Mr. T installed them and my laptop was all happy again (although not really, as the hinges were second hand and already temperamental). Anyway, this lasted about eight weeks and I sort of got back into my laptop routine and I once (twice) (couple of times maybe) (definitely) picked it up by its screen again. Guess what? Yeah. I need to get back onto ebay. And also stop being such a DUMBARSE.

5 comments to ghetto laptop

I try to treat my stuff with a little bit more… erm… how shall I say it? “Delicacy”? But yeah… I’m sure they design these &^%$#!@! things to fook-up for no apparent reason, all the same. Hinges? Who on earth would think of things like that on a laptop? Good gawd! rofl. You poor thing! You’ll end up with RSI of the knees, sitting with the screen propped up like that.

New hinges?? No!!! Here’s the handy housewife way!! Taking care not to sever those all vital leads, slip the screen into a clear plastic bag. Secure tightly at the top, leaving a 40mm rolled over top. Get out your trusty fold away clothes airer & set it up in a quiet location in your home – preferably near a window and somewhere warm. Hang the bag containing the screen from a central line of your trusty clothes airer, and place the keyboard at just the right height on a handy poof or low table. Gather an armful of cushions, throw them artfully down and voila – a delightful computer nook with handy hanging opportunities for even more decorating moments…